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Consumer Friendships With Medical insurance Determination Aids: Consumer Study Using Retrospective Think-Aloud Job interviews.
Platelet indices including platelet count, platelet distribution width, mean platelet volume, and plateletcrit did not differ between the groups. Increased LAD was detected as the only independent predictor of SEC development. CONCLUSION Platelet indices were not found to be associated with the presence of SEC formation in the left atrium among patients with mitral prosthetic valves. Therefore, the use of platelet indices alongside known echocardiographic and clinical risk factors to predict SEC development in patients with a mitral prosthesis is debatable.A 32-year-old male patient was admitted to the hospital with syncope. An electrocardiogram revealed complete atrioventricular (AV) block and a right bundle branch block with a QRS duration of 218 milliseconds. The heart rate was 40 beats/minute. Echocardiography revealed that both AV valves opened to a single ventricle as well as noncompaction of the myocardium. Due to New York Heart Association class III heart failure, cardiac resynchronization therapy with a defibrillator device (CRT-D) was performed. After the implantation, the electrocardiography QRS duration was reduced to 183 ms. To our knowledge, this was the first reported case of CRT-D implantation in a patient with a noncompacted single ventricle and complete AV block.BACKGROUND Customarily, bedrooms in Japan are left unheated. Although several studies have reported that the use of a heating system has positive outcomes on respiratory infection and asthma, the preventive effect of heating systems against infectious diseases in children is not well known. METHODS We conducted a cohort study using two questionnaire surveys, one before the winter season in November, 2018 and the second after winter in March, 2019.Participants were 155 children who did not use a heating system in the bedroom and 156 children who did. RESULTS Having a heated bedroom with a heating system was associated with decreased odds for the frequency of cold (≥3 times) (adjust odds ratio (AOR) 0.35, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.19-0.65), duration of fever (≥3 days) (AOR 0.38, 95% CI 0.22- 0.66), duration of medicine for a cold (≥3 days) (AOR 0.91, 95% CI 0.87-0.95), hospital visit due to cold (≥3 days) (AOR 0.54, 95% CI 0.31-0.94), absence from school or nursery (≥3 days) (AOR 0.43, 95% CI 0.27-0.70), influenza infection (AOR 0.43, 95% CI 0.26-0.71) and gastroenteritis (AOR 0.39, 95% CI 0.21-0.72). Influenza vaccination reduced the odds of influenza infection (AOR 0.36, 95% CI 0.22-0.59) and absence from school or nursery (≥3days less then =) (AOR 0.62, 95% CI 0.39-0.99). CONCLUSION This study implies that the heating of bedrooms may have a preventive effect against infections among children. Broader dissemination of this knowledge in Japan will require cultural change through public health awareness.BACKGROUND Obesity is a reported risk factor for various health problems. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified numerous independent loci associated with body mass index (BMI). However, most of these have been focused on Europeans, and little evidence is available on the genetic effects across the life course of other ethnicities. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the associations of 282 GWAS-identified single nucleotide polymorphisms with three BMI-related traits, current BMI, BMI at 20 years old (BMI at 20) and change in BMI (BMI change), among 11 586 Japanese individuals enrolled in the Japan Multi-Institutional Collaborative Cohort study. Associations were examined using multivariable linear regression models. RESULTS We found a significant association (P less then 0.05/282 = 1.77×10-4) between BMI and 11 polymorphisms in or near FTO, BDNF, TMEM18, HS6ST3, and BORCS7. The trend was similar between current BMI and BMI change, but differed from that of the BMI at 20. Among the significant variants, those on FTO were associated with all BMI traits, whereas those on TMEM18 and HS6SR3 were only associated with BMI at 20. The association of FTO loci with BMI remained even after additional adjustment for dietary energy intake. CONCLUSIONS Previously reported BMI-associated loci discovered in Europeans were also identified in the Japanese population. Additionally, our results suggest that the effects of each loci on BMI may vary across the life course and that this variation may be caused by the differential effects of individual genes on BMI via different pathways.To accelerate high-resolution diffusion-weighted imaging with a multi-shot echo-planar sequence, we propose an approach based on reduced averaging and deep learning. Denoising convolutional neural networks can reduce amplified noise without requiring extensive averaging, enabling shorter scan times and high image quality. The preliminary experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed denoising method over state-of-the-art methods such as the widely used block-matching and 3D filtering.PURPOSE To correlate peritumoral fat content using iterative decomposition of water and fat with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation (IDEAL) with histologic prognostic factors in breast carcinoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study consisted of 100 patients who were diagnosed with invasive carcinoma of breast and underwent breast MRI including IDEAL before surgery. The scan time of IDEAL fat fraction (FF) map imaging was 33 s. Four regions of interests (ROIs), which are a distance of 5 mm from the tumor edge, and one ROI in the mammary fat of the healthy side were set on the FF map. Then average peritumoral FF values (FFt), average FF values in the healthy side (FFh), and peritumoral fat ratio (pTFR defined as FFt/FFh) were calculated. Histologically, the presence of lymph node metastasis and the MIB-1 index were evaluated. RESULTS FFt and pTFR for breast carcinoma with lymph node metastasis (79.27 ± 10.36 and 0.897 ± 0.078) were significantly lower than those without (86.23 ± 4.53 and 0.945 ± 0.032) (P less then 0.001 and P = 0.005). Spearman rank correlation suggested that the FFt correlated with the MIB-1 index (r = -340, P = 0.001). CONCLUSION Quantification of peritumoral fat using IDEAL-iron quantification is associated with the histologic prognostic factors, and may be a practical tool for therapeutic strategy of breast carcinoma.PURPOSE To compare the image quality between turbo spin-echo (TSE)-diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI)-DWI, and to verify the diagnostic performance of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) parameters of the two techniques by using histogram analysis in terms of differentiation between ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) lesions. METHODS Ninety-four women with 94 lesions diagnosed as breast cancer by surgery underwent IRB-approved preoperative magnetic resonance imaging, including TSE and EPI-DWI with b-values of 50 and 850 s/mm2. Twenty lesions were identified as DCIS and 74 as IDC. Image quality [signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and geometric distortion] was evaluated quantitatively and compared between the TSE and EPI-DWI. TMP195 price A histogram analysis of the entire tumor voxel-based ADC data was performed, and the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile values of each technique were compared between DCIS and IDnificantly different between the techniques.MECP2 (Methyl-CpG-binding protein 2) has been shown to have a critical role in regulating DNA methylation against smoke exposed lung injury. However, the biological function of MECP2 and the underlying molecular mechanism remains elusive. Human bronchial epithelial (16HBE) and alveolar type II epithelial cells (AECII) were exposed to increasing concentrations of cigarette smoke extracts (CSE) solution to establish CSE-induced lung epithelial cell injury models. Our findings revealed that MECP2 was down-regulated, while CYP1B1 was up-regulated in CSE-induced lung epithelial cell injury models by quantitative real time PCR, western blotting and immunofluorescence staining. Down-regulated CYP1B1 was ascribed to the demethylation of its promoter by methylation-specific PCR (MSP). The in vitro experiments further showed that MECP2 overexpression significantly attenuated CSE-triggered cell growth attenuation, cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and ROS generation in lung epithelial cells by CCK-8 and flow cytometry assays. In molecular level, we further demonstrated that MECP2 overexpression obviously suppressed the expression of CYP1B1 through enhancing DNA methylation. Therefore, our data suggest that MECP2 protects against CSE-induced lung epithelial cell injury possibly through down-regulating CYP1B1 expression via elevating its methylation status.The benefits and adverse effects of immunosuppressive drugs (ISDs) in patients with paraquat (PQ) poisoning have not been thoroughly assessed. This meta-analysis study aims to evaluate the effect of ISDs in patients with moderate to severe PQ poisoning. We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Ovid Medline, CNKI and Wanfang Data from inception to January 2019. The Mantel-Haenszel method with a random-effects model was used to calculate the pooled relative risks (RRs) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs) as described by DerSimonian and Laird. An L'Abbé plot was drawn to explore the relationship between the degree of poisoning and mortality. Four randomized controlled trials, two prospective and seven retrospective studies were identified. ISDs were significantly associated with reduced mortality (RR 0.76; 95% CI, 0.58-0.99) and the incidence rate of multiple-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) (RR 0.63; 95% CI, 0.48-0.83) in patients with moderate to severe PQ poisoning. They were not associated with an increased incidence rate of hepatitis and reduced incidence rate of acute renal failure and hypoxia. The L'Abbé plot results showed a slight increase in mortality rate in the ISD group with increased mortality in the placebo group. This indicates a possible advantage of ISDs in most of the patients with severe PQ poisoning. These findings suggest that ISDs may reduce the mortality and incidence rate of MODS in moderate to severe PQ poisoning patients, and severe PQ poisoning patients might benefit more from ISDs.Information on the safety of chemical substances in patients with various preexisting conditions remains limited. Acetaminophen was added to the basal diet at 0, 80, 253, 800, 2530, or 8000 ppm and administered to type 2 diabetes mellitus rats (GK/Jcl) and the control male rats (Wistar) for 13 weeks. Both strains treated with 8000 ppm acetaminophen (561.4 and 567.7 mg/kg body weight/day, GK/Jcl and Wistar rats, respectively) showed decreased levels of red blood cell counts, blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, and total bilirubin compared to those of non-treated rats. Treatment with 8000 ppm of acetaminophen reduced the blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels of GK/Jcl rats. An increase in the relative weights of the kidneys and liver, and a decrease in the weight of the salivary glands were observed in both GK/Jcl and Wistar rats treated with 8000 ppm acetaminophen relative to those of non-treated control rats. Microscopically, both strains treated with 2530 (174.3 and 164.2 mg/kg body weight/day, GK/Jcl and Wistar rats, respectively) or 8000 ppm acetaminophen showed hepatocellular hypertrophy and degenerative lesions in the salivary glands, whereas similar lesions were not observed in non-treated rats.
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